Locates filed inside 72 hours of a signed sheet · topsoil stays on your ground by default · travel free inside 25 miles of the Butte yard · (555) 051-2384
What we dig
Three trades, one pair of machines
Everything Two Ox does fits one excavator and one mini with room to spare — which is the point. A small fleet is a cheap fleet, and a cheap fleet is a quote that does not have to pay for machines that are sitting in the yard.
Basements & footing digs
Eight to ten feet in the Butte’s glacial till, benched to the tables, cut to stake line within half an inch. Topsoil is peeled to its own pile before the first cut and it is still there when we leave — the most expensive dirt on the job is the dirt you already own.
Septic fields & replacements
Perc-tested fields laid to the county drawing: pipe bedded on stone, chambers set level, backfill compacted in eight-inch lifts at 95 percent standard Proctor so the yard over it never knows it was opened. Replacement fields are our most-dug hole — thirty years of the valley’s first systems are retiring on our watch.
Field drainage & pond cleanouts
Tile outlets re-cut, wet swales opened to a fall that works, and stock ponds dredged while the ground is still firm enough to carry a machine. A drained field is a paid-for field — the Ninepin bottom re-seeds itself every spring wherever the water finally has somewhere to go.
The walk, the sheet
Forty minutes on your ground with the tailgate sheet. Slope, access, soils, and where the spoils will sit — the number is written before the truck is booked.
Locate & mark
The 811 ticket goes in ahead of the iron, and your private lines — well, tile, invisible fence — get walked and flagged with you on day one.
Strip & keep
Six inches of topsoil peeled to its own pile and staked off from the spoils. Nothing worth keeping leaves in a dump bed.
Cut, place, compact
The dig to stake line; backfill in eight-inch lifts, each rolled to 95 percent standard Proctor and tested before the next goes on.
Grade sheet & go
Finish checked against the hubs, the density log stapled to the invoice, and the ground left ready for seed the same week.
How a Two Ox dig goes
The same five moves since 1996
Our father ran these moves with a backhoe and a handshake, and the only things that have changed are the machine control and the density gauge. A hole that follows the sequence does not generate phone calls afterwards — which is the only kind of hole worth digging twice.
2025 — 2026
Dug on the Butte
Six holes from the last two seasons. Every one of them was photographed the day the inspector signed it, because that is the day a hole stops being a hole and starts being a basement.
The tailgate sheet is the invoice
The number written on your tailgate is the number you pay. If the ground hands us rock or water the walk could not see, the machine stops and a revision is priced on paper — the hole never gets deeper while the number quietly follows it.
Why the number holds
Two rules, both inherited
Rule one: the sheet is the invoice. Rule two: topsoil never leaves — it is stripped, staked and stayed before the bucket of spoils exists. Our father wrote them on the wall of the first machine shed in 1996, and they are on the wall of this one, in his handwriting, because we moved the plywood.
Neighbours
The Butte says
Arne walked the ground, wrote a number on the tailgate, and hit rock at seven feet the next morning. The phone call came at seven-fifteen with the hammer hours on it — the revision was four hundred and ten dollars, exactly what the sheet said. I have paid three excavation invoices in my life I could predict. All three were Two Ox.
Our septic field was dying and the county wanted the replacement on the far side of a mature yard. The mini came through the gate like a wheelbarrow, the pipe went in bedded and level, and the backfill was compacted in lifts you could watch being tested. The yard settled an inch. The neighbor’s settled four, from a different crew.
They dredged our stock pond in the dry stretch and bermed the spoil where we asked for it, not where it was easiest. The banks were re-cut to a stable angle and the inlet got its riprap back. First fill held at the collar. Small outfit, complete job.
Before the iron rolls
Fair questions
The four every Butte call starts with. If yours is not here, the yard line at the bottom runs six to five, and the voice on it belongs to one of the two people who would dig your hole.
Two machines — is that enough machine for my job?
For basements to ten feet, septic fields, drainage and pond work on the Butte, yes — that is precisely what an 8-tonne excavator and a 1.5-tonne mini are built for. Whole-parcel subdivisions and road cuts are not our work, and we say so on the call rather than learn on your budget. The trades we list are the trades we have run thirty years of.
Who calls the locate?
We file the 811 ticket at least 72 hours before tracks roll, and the locate numbers go on the job sheet. Private lines are yours to mark — well, field tile, the invisible fence — and we will walk them with you on day one. The county does not paint the lines that matter most on a farm, so we flag them by hand.
Can you dig through the winter?
Until frost locks the ground, then through it where the job justifies the ripper tooth. Frost past a foot slows production and the hourly rate does not change — winter work is quoted on frost thickness, not on the calendar, and we will tell you honestly when spring is the cheaper hole.
What do you do with the spoils?
Whatever the sheet says — spread and bermed on site, or hauled at the loaded rate inside the radius. Clean topsoil is never mixed into it: that pile is staked off before the first bucket of spoil exists, and it is the first thing we point at on the day-one walk.
Spring holes book three weeks out on the Butte · (555) 051-2384 · ox@twooxexcavating.example
Tell the oxen where to dig
The parcel, the plan if one exists, and what the finished ground has to do. One of the two of us walks it inside the week, the sheet is filled in on the tailgate, and the hours you sign are the hours you pay. ox@twooxexcavating.example